


The First Name

by B_Radley



Series: Rarities [9]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Blackbirds: Year One, Dealing With Loss, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-05 23:44:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18376529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Radley/pseuds/B_Radley
Summary: Another Jedi learns of the Blackbirds’ loss. He remembers his own first loss. His first name to Remember.





	The First Name

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Blackbirds: Year One](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11036421) by [SLWalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker). 



> From SLWalker’s Blackbirds: Year One. Thank you for suggesting that I write this and for the beta. Thanks especially for the care for my OCs and including some of them in this wonderful universe.

Croft concentrates on noises from outside in the passageway, through the closed hatch, as Kenobi’s face fades from the holoprojector. Voices of his troops and the naval crew; the sounds of a naval vessel on active service. Sounds that he can lose himself in, rather than focus on Kenobi’s words.

Or the words that he hadn’t said.

Croft looks over at Drop. The huge Null’s face is NCO-blank.

At least to anyone who didn’t know him. Croft can see the tells—the brief dropped eyelids, the sharp inhale. He nods, focusing on the familiar features.

Trying not to focus on missing faces. Especially one, lying on a medbed, coughing his lungs out on a shithole of a world. One that trooper and eight of his brothers, of Croft’s first unit, plus dozens of the first incarnation of the 332nd, the 212th, and the 501st, had given their lives for. A world that the Republic had abandoned soon after.

The name—one that had been the first in a Remembrance taught to him by Drop comes to his mind. Stooge. An Alpha; the only one of his class that Croft had not fired for the disdain for the baseline ARCs under his command. The sole squad leader who had shown concern for his troops.

He doesn’t recall Stooge’s birth number. Perhaps a better commander would catalog them by their birth numbers.

He can’t. Only the names given to them by their brothers.

Croft starts as he feels a light blow in the center of his forehead. His eyes narrow as Drop pulls his thumb and forefinger away from where his first thump had struck.

“Hey, _alor’ika_ ,” he says. Croft shakes his head at the Mandalorian diminutive. _Little general_. “I know that you’re thinking of Stooge and the others. But we’ve got a job to do. The Blackbirds are coming to us for assignment. They’re a small, tight-knit unit. They’ve suffered a relatively huge loss for twelve guys. We need to figure out how to heal them and get them back to doing what they need to do.”

As always, Drop puts everything in the simplest of terms. Croft grins for a moment. _Probably needs to put everything in words of two syllables or less for his general,_ he thinks dryly.

Then his grin fades.

“So we can send them back out into the meat-grinder?” he asks, his tone sharp.

Drop gives him no respite. “Maybe. Maybe not. But we need to give them what they need to survive this and increase their chances of the rest of them surviving the war.” Drop touches his shoulder, squeezes tightly. “I’ll take care of them, Tal,” he says quietly.

“Start slow. Keep them busy, but start slow,” Croft says.

Drop rolls his eyes. “You know, my training skills weren’t in the part of the test tube that was supposedly dropped, bantha’s ass—that caused you to give me this name.”

“Yeah, well. I was just trying to piss you off so that you might be distracted from pounding my face into the deck on Kamino.”

“Kinda worked. Your narrow ass actually managed to get me to throw in the towel,” Drop finishes.

“We both know why you did that,” Croft says.

Drop nods, his expression softening—at least for him. “Yeah. Best thing I’ve ever done.”

Croft looks away, his eyes stinging. “Hey, don’t get all weepy on me, General,” Drop says. “I guess I need to send Sloane in here to shake you out of your doldrums.” He grins. “To give _succor_ to the afflicted.” Croft groans at the emphasis on the word; at the smirk on Drop’s face.

Drop’s face grows serious. “She’s a helluva leader, Tal. You may have to help Maul deal with this first loss. She can help you with that. I don’t envy you that job.” At that, he puts on his garrison cap, salutes and turns away. At the hatch, he stops and looks back. “What about the second part that General Kenobi told you about? About Mouse?”

Croft heart twists again at Drop’s nickname for his hunt-sister. He rubs his forehead, then focuses on his right hand, standing in the hatch. “I don’t know, Beast,” he says, using Ahsoka’s nickname for Drop.

He closes his eyes as he hears the door slide shut. He sees Ahsoka’s face in his mind. He sees Maul’s first name—the name that he will remember, just as Tal remembers Stooge’s, in the dry casualty report.

_Rabbit._

“I don’t know,” he whispers to the empty cabin.

+=+=+=+=+=

Tal slumps back down on his back, attempting to catch his breath. He stares into the dark eyes of the woman who straddles him, her knees held tight against his hips. She grins, an expression that always lights up her dark-skinned face. She gives a wiggle of her ass, just as Tal hears applause from their audience.

Mostly from the naval contingent. His commandos groan audibly. He closes his eyes to keep from seeing credits exchange hands.

Her hands move from pinning his arms, to his cheeks. She looks at the audience; they suddenly remember that they need to be somewhere else, other than the gym.

Lieutenant-Commander Jana Sloane, acting Executive Officer of the Republic Cruiser _Venator_ , leans down and kisses him gently, first on the darkening bruise that she had inflicted in yet another spar, then on his lips. She lies down on him. He grins as he looks over at the neatly piled service tunic, cap, boots, and belt—the uniform that she now wears, as she is no longer mistress of her own domain. He moves his hand up her muscled arm, to the tank top that she would’ve been wearing openly on her own ship.

He feels his smile fade. Jana notices, then kisses him again, this time on his closed eyes. “Who was it?”

He starts, his eyes opening. He looks away, then back up at her. She pillows her head on his chest. He lifts one of her dark curls in his fingers, twining it over his skin. “Not one of mine. A trooper from a very small unit—only twelve guys.” He feels her own fingers tighten on his exercise shirt.

“Their first,” she says.

He nods. “Hard to believe with the casualties we’ve had in this goddamned war,” he says.

“So what’s happening?” she asks.

“Kenobi has assigned them to us, for oversight, assignments, and such. They’ll be separate, but I’m responsible for helping to pick up the pieces.”

“Who’s their CO?” Jana asks.

“That’s a bit hard to explain. A Lieutenant named Maul,” he replies.

“What’s hard to explain?” she asks, her eyes curious.

“Up until a few months ago, he was a prisoner of the Jedi. Still technically is. He’s a Force user.”

“How—” she starts. She stops as her eyes fall on the closed off look in his eyes. She raises her head.

“What was the trooper’s name?” she asks, instead.

“Rabbit. Apparently he was very fast. He also was a twin. His batchmate survived. Rancor.” He looks away, fighting the rising tide. “He was a good troop, raw, but he was growing.” His mind’s eye falls on the sight of Rabbit clad in an expensive suit and a fake mustache, a DC-17 in his hand, as they escaped from Hutt Town on the Smuggler’s Moon. He allows a warm smile at his memory of Rabbit; the thin mustache giving him an air of roguishness.

Jana reaches up and draws his eyes back to hers. She touches the smile with her index and middle finger, before moving the backs of her fingers through his beard.

“He was only a day or two before heading out for an advanced SAR course,” he finishes.

He watches her close her eyes. “So what are you going to tell Maul?” she finally asks.

“I have no fucking clue. I don’t know what makes me the expert on this,” he says sharply. She narrows her eyes at him. She raises up, then stares at him. He looks away under the intense scrutiny.

“It might be that it hasn’t been so long since you lost your first,” she says.

“So what?” he asks acerbically. Jana pokes him in the chest. Somehow, he refrains from rubbing his chest. “I proceeded to, within a couple of days, get eight more of my troops killed. Half of my first task force.”

“Yeah. On their eleventh mission. After you kept them alive through the first ten. I was there. I watched you. For six months on my ship. I watched you fall in love with that little band of miscreants. I watched them as well, even after Z’ambique. They’d follow you anywhere.”

“Probably to their ultimate regret,” he whispers.

She shakes her head, then touches the side of his face. “Who says that Jedi don’t get attached?”

“I never said that I wasn’t a shitty Jedi,” he replies.

Jana continues to caress his face. “Is Maul capable of loving?”

He is silent for several moments. “I think so. I’ve watched him with the Blackbirds. I think that there’s a lot of love to go around.” Once again, memories pull at his mind. He sees Maul staggering against him, lit like a Knoxen flame-snake, the smell of apple-pie wafting over him. An instant later, two of his troopers taking either arm and making their apologies to Croft. Amusement in both of their eyes—amusement that did nothing to cover several other emotions.

Love and respect.

“You know what to do, Tal,” Jana says. Her own eyes tear. “What you did. You loved them even more, even when you lost some. Just like you love the thousand or so you now have under your command, General.”

Once again, he can’t meet her eyes. “I see you watching the status boards, when any of your teams are out. I see you mouthing the names of those nine.” She reaches down and grasps his jaw, pulling his eyes around. “I think that you’ll be able to help Maul, if he needs it.”

She jumps to her feet, yanking him up with her. She reaches down and grasps another part of him. “Even if you are a twenty-three year old ingrate who allegedly thinks with this,” she says with a smirk.

“So said with the wisdom of one at the lofty age of twenty-eight,” he says.

“Come on, General,” she says. “Let’s get a shower. I don’t have a lot of time before I’m expected on the bridge.”

“Your hall pass expired from Captain Stumpy?” he asks with his own grin.

As they exit the gym, he wonders how he’ll deal with his second quandary.

A hunt-sister’s guilt.

+=+=+=+=+=

Croft looks at the comm, starts to move his finger to the button. He brings it back.

He wonders if he can help Ahsoka. He has felt that enormous guilt—the guilt that he had made an awful mistake. One that had seemed to be the end of the world for a young padawan only fifteen years old—only an official padawan for a month.

It had only been his first.

No one had died as a result, although another padawan had been injured. He closes his eyes as he recalls his master’s face, her violet eyes filled with disappointment.

Only an instant before they had been filled with forgiveness.

He wonders if Ahsoka will find that forgiveness from her master. He shakes his head. It had been longer for him to forgive himself.

Just as it will be for Ahsoka.

Before he punches his comm, he thinks about the connections in his small world. He thinks about the grief in this war. Of young people broken, either in spirit or body.

He remembers his dead. Stooge. Metalhead. Longarm. Wrench. Bike. Gord. Spanner. Took. Hangnail.

He adds one more to his litany, for a dozen wounded birds. For his hunt-sister. Someone else’s _first_ name.

Rabbit.

Tal wonders how long it will be, in this war, if he will have to shorten his litany with the words that he hates.

_For those unnamed, but Remembered._

The holo connects to her quarters on the _Resolute_. Her blue eyes focus on his; the pain nearly overwhelming him. He paints a smile on his face.

She seizes the expression like a swimmer grabbing a rope—a lifeline.

“Hey, Runt,” he says. “Tell me.”

The flood rises.


End file.
